Then he turned jerkily on his heel, the lanthorn swinging round and leaving me in his shadow. There were ten paces to reach the door. It was like the finish of a race whether he would cover the remaining seven after the first three steps. The dangling lanthorn shed small patches of light through the holes in the metal top, like sunlight through leaves, upon the gloom of the remote ceiling. At the fifth step he pressed his hand spasmodically to his mouth; at the sixth he wavered to one side. I made a sudden motion as if to save him from falling. He was dying! He was dying! I hardly realized what it meant. This immense weight was being removed from me. I had no need to fear him any more. I couldn’t understand, I could only look. This was his passing. This....
He sank, knelt down, placing the Ian thorn on the floor. He covered his face with his hands and began to cough incessantly, like a man dying of consumption. The glowing top of the lanthorn hissed and sputtered out in little sharp blows, like hammer strokes... Carlos had coughed like that. Carlos was dead. Now O’Brien! He was going. I should escape. It was all over. Was it all over? He bowed stiffly forward, placing his hands on the stones, then lay over on his side with his face to the light, his eyes glaring at it. I sat motionless, watching him. The lanthorn lit the carved leg of the black table and a dusty circle of the flags. The spurts of blood from his shoulder grew less long in answer to the pulsing of his heart; his fists unclenched, he drew his legs up to his body, then sank down. His eyes looked suddenly at mine and, as the features slowly relaxed, the smile seemed to come back, enigmatic, round his mouth.
He was dead; he was gone; I was free! He would never know where she was; never! He had gone, with the question on his lips; with the agony of uncertainty in his eyes. From the door came an immense, grotesque, and horrible chuckle.
“Aha!-Aha! I have saved you, Señor, I have protected you. We are as brothers.”
Against the tenuous blue light of the dawn Salazar was gesticulating in the doorway. I felt a sudden repulsion; a feeling of intense disgust. O’Brien lying there, I almost wished alive again—I wanted to have him again, rather than that I should have been relieved of him by that atrocious murder. I sat looking at both of them.
Saved! By that lunatic? I suddenly appreciated the agony of mind that alone could have brought O’Brien, the cautious, the all-seeing, into this place—. to ask me a question that for him was answered now. Answered for him more than for me.
Where was Seraphina? Where? How should I come to her? O’Brien was dead. And I.... Could I walk out of this place and go to her? O’Brien was dead. But I...
I suddenly realized that now I was the pirate Nikola el Escoces—that now he was no more there, nothing could save me from being handed over to the admiral. Nothing.
Salazar outside the door began to call boastfully towards the sound of approaching footsteps.’
“Aha! Aha! Come all of you! See what I have done! Come, Señor Alcayde! Come, brave soldiers...”